On page optimization

On page optimization is the practice of optimizing elements of a page or a group of pages on a website to improve the Search engine optimization (SEO). The focus of on-page SEO is to look at optimizing the elements of a given page or the code of the page. This refers to the keywords on the page, the content, and metadata of a given page.

Even if you have great outreach you will not be able to rank well if you don’t get the basics of on page SEO right. This is one of the places in SEO where you have full control of what can be done and you should put in efforts on getting this right.

Metadata

Each web page can have individual meta tag, these are important for the Search engines to identify important information about the page. These meta tags are meant for the robots and are not viewable unless you look at the source of the web page.

Meta description is what is displayed on the search results page when a search query is returned, the other elements displayed on the search results are the title of the page and the URL of the page. If the search engine algorithm thinks that the meta description is too long or not optimized it may choose its own description to show to their users.

While keywords within a meta description tag will not help in ranking it is helpful in increasing the click through to your website . Another important feature of the meta description is that the keywords are often bolded in the results which are helpful to get users to click on your link rather that your competitors link in the search results.

It is recommended to keep the meta description under 160 characters. If you have a broad variety of keywords it may be a good strategy to let the search engine decide the description for you but when you have an article where it’s easy to guess what someone is searching for then it is recommended to have your meta description.

In addition to including keyword, it’s a good idea to include a call to action like ( Learn more, read our article to discover or find out ) . research has shown that including a call to action users are more inclined to take that action. Another important aspect of having a metadata is when sharing on social media , they tend to show the meta description to your network

Meta keyword

This used to be a major component of SEO but since it was overused and used for spammy tactics , it is now ignored by major search engines and not a ranking factor anymore and can be ignored.

Title tag

The title tag is a major component in the on page optimization strategy. The title tag is displayed at the top of the search result . It is recommended to display the keyword at the beginning of the title tag and the brand name at the end of the title tag.

Search engine places more importance on the words at the beginning of the title tag , tests conducted by SEO experts have revealed that placing the keywords at the beginning of the keyword gives a better boost to the rankings. You can use individual keywords instead of a phrase and separate your keywords with hyphens and a pipe to separate the brand name at the end.

It is recommended to have the title tag at around 55–60 characters long. It is also recommended to use up to two keywords in the title tag to have a better focus . Avoid using special characters in the title tag.

Url optimization

Due to the over optimization of keywords in URL, google has now changed the importance of URL keywords when determining where a site should rank but none the less this is still useful and is known to be a ranking signal. Even from an off-page SEO perspective URL’s as these can serve as its own anchor text. Be wary of having parameters at the end of URL as this may lead to duplicate content when the search engine parses the URL’s as different based on parameters. If a URL has changed it is best to redirect using 301 redirects to the new URL.

Heading Tags

Heading ( H1, H2, H3 etc) are very useful from an SEO perspective. Search engines look at the heading tags on a page to determine what the page is about and the page’s structure. The H1 tag is the most important of the heading tag and h2 tags are somewhat important.

While these are small signals it is useful to have heading tags optimized with keywords as long as it sound natural and not written for robots. It is a good idea to stick to one H1 per page and multiple H2 as required.

Content optimization

You may have heard many times before that “Content is king”. Without good content, your page will find it difficult to rank well in search results. You will need quality content on topic or theme of the page .

The content should include the focus keyword of the page and related keywords. It is important to make sure that keywords fit naturally into the content and not be written for robots. Make sure your content is relevant to the theme of your site .

Create your own unique content copying content from elsewhere will not help your page rank in the search results. Having little to no content may result in a penalty. Make sure you do not duplicate the same content with just minor changes based on location .

It is helpful to add video’s or images to make your content stand out. By linking out to other good domains (not spammy ones) you are showing google that you site provides value by presenting users with answers that meet their needs.

Remember that google uses Latent semantic indexing so having related keywords in the article makes it natural , for example if your content is about baseball then having words like the mound, pitching , bat , home run makes it relevant. Do not try to repeat the same keyword over and over as it might be considered spammy and may result in a penalty. Make content user-friendly and appropriate level for reading based on your audience.

Page speed and mobile optimization

make sure your page loads fast and appears correctly on mobile devices as these are important ranking factors in ranking signals.

Here are some useful links to learn more about on page optimizations.